Episode 3: Intro to How Eric & Kyle Got into Home Performance

In this third podcast episode, Eric and Kyle team up to discuss how they got into the industry, which leads to healthy conversations about air sealing, blower door testing, HERS Rating, the hospitality industry, and replacement windows.  Join us to talk about building science and learn new ways to think about how you improve your home.

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Transcript

one we are good well

um I definitely think that this has been a long time coming I mean we've been needing to do this for a long time and what I'm talking about is this podcast and it's to get our ideas and these Concepts and these things that are happening in people's houses every day out to the world and Americans and I've got Kyle Farrell with me today what's up Kyle hey what's up Eric so tell me um Kyle I think the first thing we said we want to do today is just talk a little bit about how we got into this field and that'll shed some light I think on exactly what this field is so people can understand you know what it's all about and why it's important sure yeah definitely man definitely definitely uh so for me I jumped in like a little bit after schools like 2012 I graduated in 2010 and started air ceiling just like air ceiling houses man um I'd go into like a bunch of like chain Builder houses Bob Ward like Williamsburg those are like the big big ones out towards you in Colombia um and then my Clarksville area they're out there as well and I would see like start to finish what the house looks like framing um you know open no trades have gone through we'd look at the house and see what's going on see if I can get like a head start on where I need to do things at and then seal everything so the code for new houses is three air changes we'd have to get it down to that I'd see like the testing portion as well so I can get questions sure okay first question so you're saying you graduated high school right right what year was that 2010 yeah yeah and out of high school you were working with Builders with Builders well with with Energy Services Group

my girlfriend at the Times father's friend worked for them as an area manager and he said that they needed some people I was like looking for a position somewhere and I jumped in gotcha in your first position with them was to do air sealing yep like an air ceiling technician that's what they call the position air ceiling technician yeah that was back in 2010 and you were doing what exactly 2012 sorry what exactly so we would run through a house before the drywall before the drywall and we would if you think about like straight to the top floor of the house clockwise we would picture frame every wall cavity so you know sealed exactly like a picture frame looks then we would seal the bottom stud so you know no air would come in from the the OSB sheathing you know through the bottom stud and into the house we could see all the corners you'll see all the windows and doors you know with low E low E foam and then an orange fire block foam with everything else we would seal all the penetrations going up into the attic we would see all the chase ways so like plumbing plumbing Stacks um you know anything any any kind of Dead Space leading into the attic we would see all that stuff and then we would do that every floor all the way down right anything that leads outside of the house anything that leads into a garage so for garages we would like if there's open Bays that lead in to the kitchen usually the kitchen kind of like jumps off the garage or a mud room would jump off the garage we would seal The Bays that lead into the garage from there so put like foam board in block it seal it make sure no air comes in and then we would hop into the basement and do all the rim joists to anything leading out like HVAC stuff usually there's like one line set going out and then the wire that goes out to it the electrical the main electrical line will be down in the basement all the rim joists top bottom sill plate all that stuff we would just go through and seal everything got it so I have a question about that so sure when you first got into it and you started doing it were you just sort of spraying the phone where people told you to or were you fully understanding exactly you know why and what you were doing at that point I had no idea I had no idea yeah I was just like spraying them all over the place and even Wayne Wayne was like Wayne was my uh Wayne was the guy that was like training me and then Tom Tom Marston he's actually like really heavy into everything I think he just retired he like just recently retired was really heavy until like Energy Efficiency feeling yeah um he gave me they both gave me so many pointers on everything yeah and we were like super super patient which is really important definitely on uh on training me yeah the reason why I asked that question too is because I just think that the biggest thing that I want people to understand is that it takes a process to go from you know just living in a house to fully understanding the importance of these things and how to do them and where to do them and why to do them so I just think that's really important for people to understand because it's not going to be as easy to understand as putting in Windows right no no no no not at all like we're literally in our minds if we're doing an energy audit right we are breaking down the house into segments and imagining it as if it doesn't have drywall right sometimes like if it's just like bare frame or like in order to find like holes and cracks and crevices to think about it in like a completely different way than what you would normally think of a house I always call it x-ray vision you have to right Superman you have to be able to look through the wall yeah and then like infrared infrared we're imagining like what's what's going to be and then you know figuring it out right so so you started with ESG you started how long were you with them I was with them for roughly up until adhs so I'd say until like 2017 I think or 2000 when did you start with aghs 2017. so yeah up until 2017. yeah for a very long time yeah you were there uh five years five years yeah I was like two years air Seal Tech and then I jumped into uh I jumped into like resnet ratings resnet inspections and ratings which is like inspecting the work right so doing blood or tests going in for like energy star inspections to make sure the install insulation is installed properly um so yeah after thermal breaks yeah and you were seeing all the problems right how so you were doing it for two years and then how long were you inspecting I was inspecting it was like dual so I inspected I managed I scheduled everything that was like up until up until the ends there up until the end up until 2017 when I jumped to edhs and it was all new construction all all new construction but then I started auditing as well like it was a mix I did for the last two years I did auditing resnet and Resident inspections I kind of like slowed down on the air ceiling portion of things and I was just doing like inspecting got it right got it so once you graduated up and you started doing inspections and then you were talking about you moved to a different company moved to eghs yeah so that was yeah 17. that's 2017 you know I was like solely auditing at that point yeah um you know or with North BG home so we were just cranking away there were so many leads with everything yeah you're familiar yeah it's it was a lot a lot so you've been doing this we you know you've been in this field since 2012 so that's what uh 11 years right yeah yeah yeah a long time yeah a lot of audits a lot of houses sealed I still like I pass by neighborhoods sometimes I'm like I sealed that house I did uh yeah I did like the blower on that house and make sure that you know everything met criteria did a duck test on this house yeah yeah an energy star inspection on this house is cool definitely it's a lot of neighborhoods what's cool sometimes is also going out doing an audit in a neighborhood and then going like three years later and doing another house right but that's like the same one you know where it'll look too right yeah it's like a good thing oh it's different it's it's usually different but yeah cool that's awesome man so what else you what else you want to put out there for the world to know oh I'd say up until up until this point um you know I audited over at adhs for a while then I started like crew management over there ordering everything tracking everything yeah that's none so get us up to speed that's good so get us up to speed from okay so you started working with AGS get us up to speed to where you are now right right so adhs I did you know a lot of a lot of tracking and figuring out what was going on they didn't have anyone that were or that was like tracking business expenses right like ultimately like figuring out what the profit was for each individual job we kind of just I ballparked it until until I came in and then and if I remember correctly not to cut you off there but because we were working together that's that's where we overlapped and that's where we met and we'll kind of get into that a little bit but yeah if I remember correctly you were also really focused in on material cost and right for cost and making sure that as you said that the company was profitable and you've got a really good understanding of all of the you know costs of all of this stuff sure yeah yeah and then that so that was like a huge portion of things and then also like making sure that the job went smoothly right that the customer was happy and knew what was going on at every stage of the work because that's like super super important when it comes to managing any job is like people like to know what's going on in their house right if they're going to spend you know five to ten thousand to even fifteen thousand dollars on their house they want to know like is this being done right who's working on what who's who's like where are people in my house right right they want to know these things so we we developed like a good format of like you know I would let the customer know and then I trained you know a couple people to to let them know like hey look at this hey look at that explain the customer what's going on so they're like happy with things get pictures tons and tons and tons of pictures sure we can catalog everything and give it to the customer so they have something to take other than just to work with them right right because a lot of the stuff like the attic work and mainly the attic work right they probably people probably won't step foot in their attic again they can't you know there's like 20 20 inches 20 inches of insulation in their attic it's fiberglass right right uh they're not going in they're not going in again so it's nice to have those things to know what's like underneath of all the insulation all the work that we did there and then all the prep and staging and all that stuff too so you developed uh just a good communication yeah so that the customer just knew what was going on every step of the way yep a good system from like start to finish that we were like in and out of houses relatively quickly some you know some things sometimes you have like kick-ups and it takes a little bit longer but try to keep it timeline got it so tell me because I I lost track a little bit um because I was out doing the Audits and you were obviously doing all of that and we weren't really crossing paths every day how did you then graduate into or get into the bath fans and how you did you become such a specialist in that I was just curious I was very curious right and I did I had done some I had done some over at ESG as well just like with the with the cruise so I would go out randomly with them and just see what's going on I was very curious I wanted to know how it worked it was like the hardest portion of the job only one person could do it right which was Ricky you know he was the only one that did any of that stuff used the only one that felt comfortable venting through the roof and I was like I want to be able to do this yeah you know I want to be able to like I want to be able to do every step of the the process I feel like I'm more of like an asset that way right sure like if I could step in for someone that there's only one person that can do it what happens if he calls out right like we're we're like in a rough spot we're in a rough spot and we can't do anything we can't move forward we have to wait until he he gets back in to do these other portions of the job and that stops everything right so like cross train cross train ultimately and then yeah that was it's fun yeah a lot of fun the bass fan Parts probably like the funnest out of everything I think personally and so yeah it's definitely I think one of the more challenging Parts but just to sum it all up for you it's like you in the past 11 years since 12 years from Ground Zero you became you learned how to air seal you understood like the the you know importance of insulation where it's supposed to go right you've managed cruise and come up with systems on how to you know get jobs done in a timely manner right all the way up to becoming a specialist on you know ventilation and getting exhaust pans so that's quite I mean that's that's a lot that's really good yeah yeah it's impressive it's exciting it's impressive so tell me how did you you know what you now you're doing what so now you know you're you're the one that kind of like uh brought me into everything right um so I started working with you I want to say what was that like 21 . yeah maybe 20. yeah like end of end of 20 something like that yeah uh you know I reached out to you and I had known like yeah you started your own you started your own business and I was like hey man you know I'm glad to see like everything that you've been doing man I saw that you were like putting up videos and like just like exciting stuff stuff that like no one was doing right right like it's it's like like advancements in the field right like you start as like most people will have most companies will have like a website but they'll like take it the extra step right and do like videos and and anything that's gonna give people like a better grasp on how things are done right sure so we started working together you had some things pop up we were kind of like like going back and forth with uh with certain jobs and then I decided to to ultimately like leave adhs and yeah and that to me real quick not to keep cutting you off but it's like no I'm not just really cool ideas yeah it's to me I one thing I want you to remember that you may not have recall is that the way we could reconnect it because we were working together pretty close at the animals yeah uh we you and I got partnered up we were doing stuff with uh of like Office Buildings or something right but we connected about a year later on LinkedIn yeah yeah yeah that and I just wanted to say that because I think that it's really cool how you can really you know utilize social media for the right things in your life but anyway back to you yeah so you made a huge change and how's it been it's been awesome man it's been awesome yeah it's been it's been so much fun yeah and then it's like all right so there's there's like a couple things right there is you know with with any company you work for ultimately get a lot of pressure for everything right you know timelines and it's it's it's needed to an extent right but then if you get too much pressure for me personally right if I'm if I'm constantly being pressured on things it makes me not want to do them right like it makes me like feel like oh man like uh or you know I guess in some cases it makes me want to do them faster yeah but it's it's just depending depending on like situation situation and how it ends up uh ends up popping up no you know there's no pressure there's no pressure on anything I feel like I'm being you know fairly paid money-wise when it comes to everything so I have more of like a reason to push forward right or motivation more motivation yeah I I feel like you know I make my own schedule ultimately with anything I've gotten a lot of like uh a lot more experience with like everything as a whole everything has a hole from like the management side of things to like scheduling the job to scheduling audits to like everything everything sure and you're actually even building your own website right now yeah yeah yeah the new website and doing like tinkering with SEO and stuff that's like a ton of fun really challenging uh uh but really fun really fun because it's like I get to see like how people's minds it's it's cooler to see the bigger picture right when you go and you search for something as like a consumer it's like okay I'm gonna look for like some shoes or something right you don't think about what someone puts into a website to be able to draw you to like to ultimately make a decision right like it's it's awesome it's awesome so you get to see like the big picture of like how how you can help someone from like without them even noting knowing no and it's crazy call that what is that they call it the customer Journey the customer Journey okay okay that's true they do right when I say they I'm talking about the SEO people right right yeah yeah it's neat it's neat definitely so yeah well I just you know I wanted you to just kind of get it out there like I said to the world I mean what you're doing and I think it's really um I just think it says a lot about people that are willing to break off and try their own thing and I think people that you know are looking to get work done on their home especially this type of work should be looking for guys like us guys that are you know motivated and excited about what we do and right just you know doing it because you know we're just out there we're on our own not yeah I don't know you know what I'm trying to say small yeah and small too like you know nationally uh and get like too far into this portion of things like nationally owned companies are like really really large companies it's hard to like you know I think about it in like a school standpoint right when I was younger I had problems in school I was lucky enough to be in a small school where the teachers cared a little bit more because they were small it was a small class right so they would put a little bit of extra attention on me and with a small company it's like it's just us right so it's it's us focusing all of our individual attention we're not we're not getting like dogged out to the point where we're doing like 50 million audits a week and it's it's challenging for us to like to to give a ton of attention to one specific audit Quality quality yeah versus quantity right yeah I'm definitely good too yeah for sure for sure I'm curious Eric how did you get into the like energy auditing Energy Efficiency field oh wow you really want to ask me that I do yeah Kyle I have been this has been like years in the making for me okay um so back in 2006 I left Hilton Hotels so I had a really good job you know nice salary and everything Insurance good boss and I decided to get into business with a friend of mine who had started a window replacement company about three years prior to when I joined so he started in 2003 and I you know got on board about 2006. and the reason why that's important is because important part of the story is because I you know didn't know anything about being a contractor or houses or Windows or anything like that but I did know how to treat people and I know how knew how to you know make people feel comfortable and so what I did is um I worked with him from 06 to 2015 and we just you know focused in on the customer experience and making sure that the windows were ordered and the they came in in a timely manner and that if somebody had a complaint you know that we were just there you know I always in the hotel industry I learned that you know when people had a problem with their hotel room the best thing to do to solve it is just go see them face to face you know they can't really you know people are gonna feel much better about a problem being solved so I took that same mentality to the Home Improvement industry and if somebody had to worry about their window or they were concerned because their roof looked like it was wavy you know I went out there and took a look at it and worked with them in person but unfortunately you know because of many many reasons which I won't get into now in 2015 the company just you know we just couldn't sustain we we were just spending a little bit too money on average how much money on Advertising and we had to close the doors and it was you know heartbreaking and it was very difficult time my life but you know in hindsight I'm really glad it happened and the reason I say that is because I think I found my true passion and what that is is home performance and in 2017 I so that's two years after going out of business I still really hadn't found myself I I didn't know what I wanted to do I was barely making ends meet and I stumbled across the building performance Institute and I started reading about you know the different jobs and the different certifications and it was really interesting and I felt like I would be a really good fit because I've always had sort of an analytical type of mind but anyway fast forward I got a job as an energy auditor in pretty much early 2018 that's where I met you at eghs in Baltimore and I just put my head down and got to work and what I mean by that is once I got my certification I felt like that was just the beginning of my education because I started to do energy Audits and all of the things that I was learning in class that I didn't quite get it all started becoming very clear to me why it's important how it all works and not only that but how to fix the problems so that's where we are today other than a small apartment there which would be covid and that kind of put me in front of my computer one day and I just started writing and what I mean by that is I had all of these experiences out in the field doing energy audits and it was like I couldn't even contain you know all these ideas and this information because remember to take a step back I was in Windows and Roofing so I was already a marketer you know I like to put a message out and get the phone to ring I wanted to you know people to buy Windows for me so I kind of had that in me once I had time and covet hit and I sort of sat back and I sat in front of my computer I started a Blog and lo and behold people started calling and you know that's kind of where I am right now so nice how does that sound that's good that's very good man very good I like how all right so like the experience with Hilton is like huge right because ultimately you know a customer friendly or uh yeah because a customer friendly experience is like it's huge it's huge it's huge it makes all the difference in the world if things are Pleasant along the way absolutely and like that's all anyone could ask for and any any like Contracting situation I haven't man there's so many so many experiences you know when we sit down and we do an audit with someone people are like kind of like apprehensive because they've had a bad experience in the past where someone wasn't like communicative with them right or like they just like drop off after after work is completed or or like don't follow up in the beginning with anything it's like fuzzy and I you know oh I got one or they're pushy right or they're super pushy pushy they're they want to make the sale how many times have you just you know in the years you've been in this have you heard the story about oh yeah you know they gave me one price and I wasn't comfortable and then they dropped the price and right they dropped it again and then on the way out the door before the guy even got in his car he dropped the price of fourth time it's like why did he why didn't he offer me his best price the first time right and that's that just that just happened with Mr Anderson like two weeks ago I had an audit out in like the Montgomery County area and he was like yeah I had a roof Guy come out and he was like something like what I think he said around like 20 000 and that you know like eighteen thousand sixteen thousand exactly the way that you said it and it was just like all right so yeah right I didn't want anything to do with with anything yeah no reasonable I literally when it hit me that I was in a completely different field than selling Windows and Roofing even though those are important things don't get me wrong sure but it was the day that I was doing an energy audit and I was putting in 14 um um uh floodlights into a kitchen for a woman and I was and it was a nine foot ceiling so I had to get up on like a ladder and everything it was before I was smart enough to get a little step stool I just used my you know um my gorilla 13 foot the battle one I would bounce it around the kitchen but anyway I was sweating my you know what in my and the ladies like she's like are you sure that I only have to pay you a hundred dollars for this right yeah yeah she's like because I I don't know you've been working so hard for like two hours and I gotta tell you like my refrigerator guy comes just to look at the refrigerator I gotta pay him 80. I was like so I just knew right from that point I don't know why for me it was but it was like this is a completely different world than I'm in right now and I love it yeah it's awesome man it is it's awesome I mean you get to give people like so many things so many process so many things to be comfortable in your own house is like so important that's huge yeah and and it's something that people they don't even think it's attainable so right because their house is and this is not a dig but it's just it's really in bad shape now that doesn't mean structurally it just means from an insulation standpoint from a from a protective standpoint it's a bad shape and they think that you know there's just no hope but no no with a few tweaks here and a little bit of muscle there and a few innovative ideas there no you can have a nice comfortable home so right all right right now this to me is the reason why we want to do this podcast and I think this is going to be at least initially the format and what we're going to do and we talked about this I know but we're just going to talk a few you know a little bit about some of the interesting problems that we've maybe faced in in a week and right right that's going to be the next part of the show here I just want to ask you because we've both been out in the field this past week and I just wanted to ask you you know what interesting problems have you come across because this is going to be how we help people if we can and then I'm going to let you speak if we can identify some of these recurring problems the the people that listen when they're in their home and they see these things around their own house they're going to know how to fix them right so tell me Kyle what what something that you found this week that was interesting I'll jump back a couple a couple weeks ago to we recently started working with this company like Jay yes they do um you know they do crawl space encapsulations like a really really bang-up job on crawl space encapsulations right they'll lay down like a crazy amount of vapor barrier um I think they go down to like I think I go down on like or up to like 20 mil and then they put padding down they do a two inch foam board all across the walls so what you're saying is somebody could actually set up a TV and live in their crawl space yeah yeah yeah it's clean it's clean so then we go in and we like file file rebates for them for that most of the crawl spaces are in very rough shape prior which is you know either there and I went to an audit she was super cool um Irish sweet and I I noticed some like fuzzy things around her house you know we were doing like a walk through in the beginning of an audit we sit down for 15 minutes we talk about what's going on generally right and he had a rough layout of the house from walking up to it and then she uh she gives me a tour of everything she's showing me things I'm noticing like there's like mold spotting on the outsides of the house front and back to the eaves she had had issues with like a ton of heat buildup in that specific spot they installed soffits had a roofing company come out and install vended soffits all the way through like beautiful job too like I'd get up in the attic and I could I could see there's so much light coming through the soffits but this is mold build up on the outside where's the mold it's like it's it's enough to wipe off it's not a crazy amount but it's it's like if you're looking at like the front of a house it's a Rancher so it's a basic box um so if you look at the front and the back of the house like that corner where it meets the soffit almost okay uh there were just like spots here and there of like of build up and what was happening is like wind washing eventually happens once they did put the soffits in the wind catches the underside of the uh the wind catches the underside of the soffit and then any loose like blown insulation if there's no baffle stopping it like a baffle you know redirects the air to the ridge vent at the top of the peak of the roof uh if it doesn't stop that it pushes the insulation back once the wind catches it so there are a ton of spots in the Attic when you look down towards the soffits the outside wall is not insulated at the top because the wind pushed all of it back so in the it'll happen mainly in the summertime right where it's super super hot outside and then cool inside it condenses right at that spot where there's no there's no Insulation at because it's it's very you know it's very hot in the attic and it's very cold on the inside of the house it's like when you take like anything out of the refrigerator and you get like a little bit of moisture on the outside of it that temperature difference creates like a dew point ultimately like exactly and mold builds up along that so the mold it was observed was on the inside wall or the outside inside of the house inside of the house inside of the house okay yeah yeah so the heat that was the heat from the attic was because it was I'm sorry I just want to make sure I clarify sure So Pro and I want to make sure I understand so prior to you coming to do the audit and prior to having the soffit the open soffit installed there was no issue there was no issue yeah well well it was it was hot it was hot because there's no ventilation in the Attic it was just hot overall in the house yeah it was hot enough but as far as the mold that showing a sign there was no issue once the soffit was installed and the wind washing took place and removed or pushed the insulation away from that area that allowed the heat from the attic to migrate through to the cold side which is the inside wall and then you saw a little bit of black mold that you were able to wipe away right but what you're saying is during the process of the audit you're able to determine why that that occurred yeah yeah yeah it was awesome too it's like clear-cut clear-cut like and then the you know the solution is sealing it putting a baffle in place that way wind washing doesn't happen and then insulating it all right okay so let's see because I feel like a lot of people you know when I go out and do Audits and I say seal it I don't know you know it's like I feel like they're looking at me sometimes like a deer in headlights and I try to recognize that so even though I know we're just talking right now but we can put some video on some of the places we're gonna put this but tell me sure when you say seal it just what does that mean so on the outside wall there is no where are you though where in the Attic if you think about like from the attic if you go to the outside wall the the eaves where you can see into the soffit right there will be an outside wall which you can also see from below and it's drywalled right it's your exterior wall your exterior wall yeah yeah now if you look down you'll see uh the top of the wall right and then you'll see where the drywall meets it in the corner right there and then you'll also see the sheathing and a little piece of the siding that's attached from the outside right so in order to seal it you would have to you know grab a can of foam you can do like a gun or even just like the straw stuff right and seal that outside wall where the OSB sheathing meets right there because that's that's probably another thing that was causing it right is air getting into that leaky area and then touching the wall area right that's in the drywall and and just build up right build up of heat and cool heat and cold hot and cold and mixing together and then condensing right there so seal that so that no air can move through there got it and then uh yeah yeah any holes wire holes that pop through anything that would would allow air to escape out of the house or get into the house got it seal it so how did you communicate this information to her did were you able to do it in real time yeah yeah I was able to tell her like exactly what was going on with it and I just let her know exactly like the way that we were explaining it that there's a lot of hot air in the Attic right a lot of hot air in the attic and when there's no like separation between the two this is exactly what happens condensation mold mildew you know high humidity very very high humidity and she was in she was in the um like uh just outside of Annapolis so it's already like kind of humid because they're close to the water right the water table is very high out there sure but inside of the house ideally when the AC is running there's like 50 humidity or less right right and she was hitting like upwards before they had the crop the crawl space encapsulation she's hitting upwards of like 60 to 70 percent humidity inside of our house inside of her house that's crazy definitely a good place to grow right right yeah and she keeps it she keeps it relatively dark you know it's it's like prime prime spot from older girl so yeah I just communicated it over to her like that and the rebate was really really good so it made sense yeah until I do everything cool um and yeah yeah other than that too her attic was in very rough shape it was built in like the 70s 70s there's like four inches of roughly scattered fiberglass across the top and huge huge huge holes around the kitchen you see like a lot of places have like kitchen bulkheads uh where the cabinets are yes the little drop downs and it's just like a dead space for air to move through and actually I found some really really cool stuff there too Eric where there was a uh return docked that was wall panned right and then wall painting is not a thing anymore wall painting is when you use a drywall cavity so like back behind the drywall the framing the framing that's back there you use that as like a duct right it's not not a thing Pennsylvania still allows it they're in their own like world out there

but that lead that led right to the kitchen bulkhead huh so you can imagine it's like a horrible horrible thing especially when it comes to Energy Efficiency right where if it's crazy crazy hot in the attic and you have a return duct that's connected to the Attic the first thing when the system kicks on that's going to happen is it's going to suck a ton of hot air right into the system right across humidity right away right right and then it's just like distributed all throughout your house there's nothing that's going to stop stop that from happening whatsoever yeah so um yeah that was another cool thing that I saw and then I saw that I saw that with infrared but then also I didn't find it until I did the blower door ah because I didn't have any kind of negative pressure right like I didn't have any kind of suction to show me any of that once I turn the blower door on you get the negative pressure in the house everything all the air from outside of the house and in the Attic comes into the house from the leaking cavities and I was able to find that I was able to find that and I could feel it when I turned the blower on that's what drew me to it right is I turned the blower door on and I could feel all this hot air coming the duct was like right by the front door right behind the front door ultimately got it uh so I turned the blower on I'm like where's all this hot air coming from so I turn around look at it stick my hand in front of it and I'm like this is crazy

so you're saying that you felt hot air coming through the return through the return yeah only one side of it though only one side of it because the wall blocker when I verified it from from the attic here the the when they did uh more pans they would put a 2x4 on the top of the wall to make sure that it was like sealed off right so that all the air was coming specifically from that like from that duct door they'd put it like or they'd put some kind of like metal metal flashing over top of it right to keep it from so because their their mentality was if we put a piece of wood over top or a piece of metal that's going to block the air right yeah but it doesn't lock everything right right HVAC system is powerful it pulls and I've seen them go up to like 2000 cfms right yeah so if that all that air 1500 let's say I think her system was set at 1500 cfms 1500 cfms distributed from from three returns because there's only three returns in the house 500 cfms of air being pulled through that return he's gonna suck us on a hot air through the system yeah just make everything work harder right what you were saying they did they blocked it up the top is that did you finish your thought there they they block one side they block the right hand side but they did not block the left-hand side which is why I was feeling all that air moving through the left hand side it's just like an open like if you look at it from the attic some pictures too that I can yes so if you look at it from the attic it's literally just like an open wall frame that I could stick my hand into right so okay one thing I want to mention about that number one the really cool thing and I always tell people this it when a blower door test is running in your house and it's set the right way or not the right way but the way where it's depressurizing or pulling the air out anytime you feel air moving a draft or a flow of air you know it's coming from the outside so you put your hand up to the return you felt the hot air you're like oh something's wrong here you knew it was coming from the outside um okay so what did I want to say about that oh I think that oh this is what I wanted to say let me ask you this I don't know if you're gonna remember this what was the age of the home 70s so yeah and what year is it 23. 53 50 years that house has been just working inefficiently for 50 years yeah because you're because she's getting the work done right yeah yeah yeah she's getting the work done yeah yeah 50 years yeah amazing imagine how much like the longevity on that though like if it would have been done I mean obviously right it wasn't established until like 2012 hmm hours our format right the amount of money that could be saved yeah is like insane well I think about that but and knowing everyone that's really important but I just think about too the comfort you know right it's just yeah and how many HVAC systems did they buy Through The Years or whoever owned the house through the years because three you know that's a lot too man when you think about like well 25 year longevity that's one over that's one over uh like normal okay here's the kicker and and this is just you know it could it could happen it might not but was the house does she complain about dustiness um

not particularly but I have had that before yeah yeah cool yeah gotcha yeah yeah so so Eric what are uh the highlights of of this past week for you what have you had interesting pop-up good question thanks yeah so this week how was a little slower and that's to be expected I think in home performance I feel like when the temperature on the outside and the temperature on the inside of your house are about the same then you know typically people are not in tune with the problems that are going on so the calls are down so right for me this week I had to do a little bit of brushing up on studying and getting recertified because as an envelope professional and uh um building analysts as you know we have to keep our certification current so I took a online course and I did learn something pretty cool and I it was something that I did not really think about and it's been something that has you know eluded me for whatever it's been now five years and it's not that um I think that I've missed opportunities for people because I haven't I think everybody that I work with ends up getting these parts of their house done but where I'm going with this is I love taking people downstairs to the basement during the blower door test to show them how leaky their basement is that's just something that's really fun for me it's easy to see it's always there there's lots of spider webs it just it never gets old to me so I always talk about you know how when you seal the rim joists you keep the humidity out and it's going to help in the winter with you know keeping the basement warmer and I think where I'm going with this what I missed and what I learned is that the rim joist is also really important because if it's not sealed and insulated properly you're gonna get a lot of drafts around the floor you're also going to get a colder than normal floor now why is that important well it goes back to something we all kind of learned maybe when we're younger and that is that most of the heat in our body escapes through our head and our hands and our feet right so if you have a really cold floor that's going to give the average human the impression or the feeling that their house is colder than it maybe actually is which means they're going to head over to the thermostat and guess what turn it up right right so I you know I was thinking this through because it was like profound to me like I didn't really explain that to people and the importance and how that also can be a benefit to them in that way but the good news is that most times when people have the accessibility and I've worked with them they're always getting their Rim Joys sealed anyway so it's not like any opportunity's been missed but I just thought that was pretty cool yeah yeah definitely the one definitely that's awesome yeah that's awesome yeah and room doors 2 is like a sweet spot it is Sweet Spot it's it's like exactly like you said very accessible easy to get to and super important super important it's rare it's where stock effect takes place right all the air escapes out of the top of the house and and gets sucked in and funneled through the basement and then right through the house and then the cold floor cold floor and all that yeah yeah so very very important yeah so we are going to this is our first episode let's do this um I wanted to end each of our little talks about um you know how the home performance with energy star program works and just give people little nuggets so for me um one thought I had was you know sometimes I go through and I you know if I maybe just didn't mention it because I got caught up on some other topic and I go down to the water heater and I get my drill out and I drill a hole right in my combustion testing that's something that not a lot of people know because they're like what was that drill going what are you doing down there it's like I'm just drawing a little hole so I can stick my probe in so I can make sure that you know the hot water heater is running properly and things like that right I think that's an important part of an energy audit that you know not a lot of people know sure yeah like safety testing safety testing ultimately yeah exactly yeah definitely man this has been fantastic uh Eric ants here Kyle Farrow we are gonna try to come at you as regularly as possible and we're going to you know get to the point and talk a little about things that we find each week because one thing I always say is that you know we all live in this great state of Maryland but we all live in different types of houses but they're all pretty much built the same and they all have pretty much the same problem so you can definitely learn from your neighbor on this so um thanks for listening Kyle you got any last words no no no I'm just excited to be here and and uh to keep going with us yeah yeah man yes sir I think there's a really good episode [Music] [Applause]

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